Israel’s election

A newly hatched hawk flies high

A rival right-winger may be rattling the incumbent prime minister

AS A general election on January 22nd looms, a new party on Israel’s bellicose right has rushed into the reckoning. Opinion polls suggest that Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), led by Naftali Bennett, a 40-year-old software tycoon, could get as many as 14 seats in the 120-strong parliament. That could make it the third-biggest. Pollsters reckon the Likud-Beitenu alliance led by the incumbent prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is still set to win the largest number of votes, getting 33 seats or so. But Mr Netanyahu may have to reach out to parties on the centre and left if he is to avoid teaming up with the punchy Mr Bennett.

The new outfit is a brash reincarnation of the venerable but moribund National Religious Party. It flatly opposes Palestinian statehood, vigorously backs Jewish settlements in the West Bank and baldly urges Israel to annexe swathes of it. Mr Bennett, who once led the Judea and Samaria Settlement Council, says the conflict with the Palestinians is pretty well insoluble. Israel, he argues, should devote its energy to domestic problems.

Apparently loth to be constrained in a new cabinet by such a party on his right flank, Mr Netanyahu wants to keep Mr Bennett out. The younger man was Mr Netanyahu’s bureau chief in opposition but the pair fell out, allegedly over the prime minister’s widely disliked wife.

Mr Bennett’s hawkish views on the Palestinian question are held by many in Mr Netanyahu’s own party list. But some Likudniks blame Mr Bennett’s rise on Mr Netanyahu’s decision to merge his party with Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beitenu. As a result, they say, disaffected voters are switching to Mr Bennett.

Mr Lieberman, who had until recently been foreign minister in the ruling coalition, looked in line to succeed Mr Netanyahu as leader of the new alliance. But things have gone awry for him. Though a long criminal investigation into bribery and money-laundering was recently closed for lack of evidence, a charge of breach of trust was then filed against him, finally forcing him out of office. If convicted, he would probably leave politics, at least for a while.

Mr Netanyahu still looks likely to keep his job. But he may have to reshape his coalition more drastically than he expected, as rivals on the right rise and fall.